You know how it goes when you’re sitting in shul between Mincha and Maariv, and a speaker gets up to give a dvar Torah—but he does not know how to stop on time?!
Well, that’s exactly what happened to us on the chag. The speaker had prepared a one-hour drasha instead of twenty minutes, and he had already gone over by half an hour and still had plenty more to say. He was trying to shorten it, but was not stopping, and it was uncomfortable to tell such a distinguished man that it was already time for the Yom Tov meal (seudas chag), and there were guests, and people needed to daven and get home.
Personally, I sat and listened, but the clock was stressing me out, and I could see that even the gabbai was at a loss. But what happened next could not have been planned any better.
In the row in front of me sat a young man with special needs who, from time to time, blurts out unclear words loudly into the air—which does not bother the regular congregants who know and are used to him. But suddenly, in the middle of the overlong drasha, he shouted something that sounded like “How much longer?!” The speaker, who did not know him, got flustered and said, “I’m finishing soon!” Two minutes later, the young man blurted out another word, and the speaker again apologized and said he was about to finish. One more word—and the speaker wrapped up the drasha.
In my heart, I laughed, and I saw the gabbai quietly laughing too, happy about the hashgacha pratis that HaKadosh Baruch Hu brought about a natural way to stop the speaker—who likely would have continued for quite a while longer and caused even more burden on the congregation (tircha d’tzibbura) than he already had.
כ.ה.
